Strength in diversity

At my church we’re currently hosting a cricket tournament.

Basically, a few friends were bored in the wet and cold winter months, and decided to convert the church hall (which was already carpeted) into an indoor cricket facility. One thing led to another, and suddenly we were hosting a tournament with 10 teams from all over the city and had sparked a community of over 100 people (and probably a dozen nationalities) who get together up to three times a week to hang out and play some friendly (but very competitive) cricket.

Which got me thinking about denominations.

See, although most of the matches take place on Wednesday and Thursday nights, we sometimes use Sunday as a make-up day. One of the other teams involved in the tournament is from another local church, and they are the only team which doesn’t play the Sunday games – because their pastor said they shouldn’t. On the other hand, my church is actively running a competition on Sundays.

And that is why I love the diversity of denominations in the Church.

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The defining criterion for inclusion into the Church is pretty simple: if you affirm the three ecumenical creeds, you’re a Christian church. This benchmark for inclusion does two important things:

Firstly, the creeds describe the primary doctrines which define Christianity. They set the minimum requirement: if you are not willing to sign on to everything in the creeds, you’re not a Christian church.

Secondly, the creeds set the limits as to which doctrines may be considered primary. If it’s not in the creeds, it does not affect inclusion into the Church.

This is incredibly important.

The primary articles of faith give us a common understanding on which to base our discussion. If I accept the divinity of Jesus and you insist that he was merely human, we are starting from fundamentally different points, and until that division is reconciled we can go no further.

But having accepted the primary articles, the Church can tolerate disagreement on any other issues. There is space within it to discuss, to debate, and even to diverge. We don’t need to have common consensus on everything, and Christians do not need to be carbon copies.

Because we all accept the primary doctrines as a common foundation, there is diversity without division.

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Infant baptism or adult?

We can agree to disagree.

Purgatory, annihilationism or universal reconciliation?

We can agree to disagree.

Transubstantiation or symbolic fellowship?

We can agree to disagree.

Young-Earth creationism, guided or Darwinian evolution?

We can agree to disagree.

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I’ve prayed in ancient cathedrals, and had communion on top of a mountain.

I’ve had attended church services with incense and Latin liturgies, and also services consisting entirely of freestyle drumming.

I’ve been to churches where they use grape juice for the Eucharist, and churches where they’ll buy you a beer after the service.

I’ve experienced the inspiring beauty of monastic Taizé singing, and I’ve worshipped with electric guitars.

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Within the sprawling, expansive, vibrant and all-embracing Church, there is space for the traditionalist and the radical, for the poet and the scientist, for the broken and the lost.

There is space for me.

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Note:

Speaking of diversity, several bloggers have banded together to create Christian Diversity, a new project to promote inter-denominational dialogue and fellowship. On that site, writers are collaborating to explore different Christian perspectives on a range of theological issues. Check it out!

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Related posts:

Anne Rice and hypocrisy in the Church

Serious, not fanatical

Religion, sex and truth claims

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Religion, sex and truth claims

Truth claims are everywhere.

Sometimes the connections are complicated: our systems of justice are predicated on the assumption of free will, because without the choice to act or not in a particular situation, there can be no question of responsibility for actions. This in turn makes the truth claim that rigid materialism is false (because otherwise our actions are merely the results of random unguided processes – indeed, we are just collections of random unguided processes).

The ones I’m interested in today are a little more straightforward, but still quite subtle. For example:

“Religion should evolve with society.”

Buried in this statement is the claim that religious beliefs do not contain ultimate truth, and that religions are really just support clubs. If the core teaching of a religion should evolve, then it contains no absolute truth, for such truth would transcend social fashions.

“The Bible was written by primitive people in an ancient culture thousands of years ago, so it can’t be relevant to us now.”

Again, if there is objective truth, if there is an objective morality, if human life is objectively valuable, then these things are impervious to the passage of time. And if such teaching is contained in the Bible then it remains just as relevant today as when it was originally penned.

But the statement that I really want to look at today is this one:

“Everyone is entitled to their own religious views, but they must keep them at home and out of the public space.”

While it looks all sweet and tolerant and accepting on the surface, this statement actually claims that religion is irrelevant and contains nothing of real truth or value. Because if we believe that something is important, then we need to talk about it and explore it, not conceal it. Francis Crick once said, “Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children.” I doubt that he would have advocated similarly for protecting children from learning about biology. In making that statement, he was actually claiming that religion is neither true nor valuable.

Which brings us to sex, of course.

On the surface, sex may seem like a rebuttal to my argument, since we certainly try to shield children from too much contact with it. But sex is still something that is very important to us, and we actually don’t keep it out of public: we talk about it all the time, we wear wedding rings, we are outraged by incidents involving sexual abuse. We acknowledge that it is very important, so we talk about it and keep it in public view. This isn’t just a new permissive 21st century phenomenon, either – we have always kept sex in public. The really important part of sex is the joining of two individuals, not the physical details. Marriage is an important part of sex. So are the children which result from it. Even the most prudish Victorians actually kept the reality of sex and discussion of sexually-related topics firmly in the public domain.

Earlier this year the Global Atheist Convention came to Melbourne. Amidst all the silliness and ravings, all the outlandish and ridiculous grandstanding, the convention did perform a valuable function: it brought the conversation about God into the public domain.

We need to keep it there. It’s important, it’s not going away, and it deserves our attention.

And let’s also stop pretending that “Keep your religion at home” is either innocuous or tolerant.

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Related posts:

Living a good and/or Christian life

Believing and understanding

Chesterton on Miracles

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Sex and science: Discuss

Sex and science: we need to talk about both. And not just on this blog – we need to talk about them in church and at home, too.

Both sex and science are hugely powerful and important. Both have the potential to be wonderful, or to be terribly destructive. Responsibility and maturity are needed before we can safely handle either.

This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t teach our kids about sex, or science for that matter. Interest and curiosity (in both areas) are aroused from a young age, so let’s rather start the discussions early. Parents and pastors need to be willing to engage openly with both subjects.

But we need to be honest about both. Eventually, kids are going to grow up and engage with the wider world, and the wider world is drenched in both science and sex.

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Choose your perversion

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Teaching kids that sex is bad or wrong or evil is ultimately destructive. At best, they will grow up with all sorts of psychological baggage that will inhibit their ability to engage in healthy and fulfilling sex lives when they eventually get married. At worst, this sort of teaching will just make sex more attractive and alluring, and the desire to experiment will be irresistable. We’ve all seen the results of irresponsible sexual experimentation, and it’s tragic. But this does not mean that sex itself is bad, or that it should always be avoided. It just means that we need to be aware of what defines a responsible and safe context within which to engage with the power of sex.

I’ve quoted elsewhere the observation by Vox Day that rebellion against religious teachings on sexuality can be a powerful incentive to start ignoring God:

“The idea that there is any rational basis for atheism is further damaged by the way in which so many atheists become atheists during adolescence, an age that combines a tendency toward mindless rebellion as well as the onset of sexual desires that collide with religious strictures on their satisfaction.”

But this does not necessarily indicate a mindless nihilism. If the adolescent has never been given an understanding of why there are limits on how, where and when sexual desires should be fulfilled, then there is no reason not to discard such strictures in favour of a raging libido. “I really REALLY want to do this, and I don’t find myself with any compelling arguments opposing it, so why not?”

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Which brings us to science. Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project, writes about his own transition from a nominally Christian upbringing to an atheist worldview:

“I became an atheist because as a graduate student studying quantum physics, life seemed to be reducible to second-order differential equations. Mathematics, chemistry and physics had it all. And I didn’t see any need to go beyond that. Frankly, I was at a point in my young life where it was convenient for me to not have to deal with a God. I kind of liked being in charge myself.”

We note that there is the adolescent rebellion thing again, but there also another motivation: Collins was exposed to new scientific concepts that seemed to explain everything and left no room for God. This is always a danger if a student has never learned to recognise the limits of science and how these limits relate to theology. (As a general rule, science is good on the “How?” questions and proximate causes; it’s really bad on the “Why?” questions and ultimate causes. Happy footnote: Collins later rejected the bankruptcy of atheism and recognised the intellectual fulfillment offered by the Christian worldview).

In particular, it’s very common for explanations of mechanism (such as scientific theories of evolution, quantum physics or cosmology) to be falsely imbued with the quality of agency. Although this is an elementary error, it is a very frequent one: we see it from countless first-year university students, and also from eminent scientists such as biologists Richard Dawkins and Francis Crick, and chemist Peter Atkins. A well-known example comes from Dawkins’ book The Blind Watchmaker. Responding to William Paley’s classic “argument from design” (in which Paley suggested that the apparent design of living creatures points to their designer in the same way that a watch points to a watchmaker), Dawkins writes:

“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”

It’s stirring rhetoric, but if you actually read it closely enough it stops making any sense. Philosophically, this is an example of a category error – what Dawkins does is substitute a mechanism (natural selection) for an agent (the Creator). In other words, to return to the metaphor, he has found a watch spring, and concluded that the watch did not need a designer. Indeed, he goes further: he claims that the watch spring built the whole watch.

This is ridiculous.  But in the absence of any previous exposure to evolutionary theory, it’s easy to get carried away by the prose until you don’t even notice that it is no longer logically coherent. Of course the Darwinian paradigm is a wonderful framework for structuring biological research, but it still has limits, and Dawkins has gone way beyond what evolutionary science can claim. Likewise, gravity is splendid for predicting the movement of celestial bodies, but it’s useless for explaining magnetism.

Like a hormonally-addled teenager on a hot date, we can be swept along on emotion rather than rationality if we have not learned to recognise the proper limitations of science.

Scientific repression is no solution. There are very real advantages to living with the products of scientific progress, and anybody can see that (although there are certainly dangers as well). But as with sex, we need to teach kids to engage with science responsibly.

And offering a silly substitute like “creation science” instead of the real thing will never be intellectually satisfying, much like a subscription to Playboy will never be a replacement for a loving, intimate relationship.

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If we can start talking to kids about why a sexually promiscuous lifestyle is destructive, they are much more likely to actually value and protect their sexuality.

If we can start talking to kids about why Dawkins, Crick, Atkins, Harris etc. are scientifically off their collective rockers, we won’t have to worry that one day we’ll discover a copy of The God Delusion shoved furtively beneath the mattress.

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Related posts:

Hypothetically speaking

“Creation Science” isn’t.

Overlap in the Magisterium?

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The relativist creed

An atheist worldview encourages relativism, with its insistence on removal of moral absolutes and rejection of truth claims. One of the finest expressions of self-defeating nature of relativism is the poem Creed, written in 1993 by English poet and music journalist Steve Turner. (The postscript, called Chance, was added later).

Personally, I prefer the Nicene.

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Creed by Steve Turner

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don’t hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.
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We believe in sex before, during, and
after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.
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We believe that everything’s getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.
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We believe there’s something in horoscopes
UFO’s and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.
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We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.
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We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then it’s compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn
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We believe in Masters and Johnson
What’s selected is average.
What’s average is normal.
What’s normal is good.
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We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.
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We believe that man is essentially good.
It’s only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.
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We believe that each man must find the truth that
is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth
that there is no absolute truth.
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We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.
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Postscript:
If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear:
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State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
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It is but the sound of man
worshipping his maker.
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Related posts:

Living a good and/or Christian life

Children of God

Secular (in)Humanism

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Faith is a part of life

In my last post, I wrote about what “faith” means in a Christian context. It’s a complex and multi-faceted term, but it is important to appreciate that faith is not just an aspect of Christianity. It is a part of life.

Theologian Tyron Inbody wrote the following:

“…faith is a dimension of the human existence as such. There can be no human life without the presence of faith. The opposite of faith is not doubt but nihilism – the loss of order, meaning and purpose in life… The scientist cannot operate apart from faith – faith in the dependability of nature, the orderliness and intelligibility of the universe, the unity of nature and the harmony of its laws. Social life is impossible apart from faith. We cannot exist without elemental trust in each other. If you doubt this, consider what one terrorist attack can do to undermine our confidence in the social order. And we act as if this social order is to some degree moral. We assume and affirm that there are things we ought to do and things we ought not to do. Although we may not agree on which things are which, we act with moral demands that are binding. These beliefs point to the fact that we cannot exist as humans apart from faith. They are justified not because they are demonstrable but because we cannot live without them. They constitute a primordial faith.” (The faith of the Christian church: an introduction to theology)

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More specifically, science depends on faith.

Eugene Wigner received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963. Like Einstein before him, Wigner was particularly interested in how well mathematics describes the physical universe:

“The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious, and there is no rational explanation for it… it is an article of faith.” (The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics)

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Similarly, from physicist Sir John Polkinghorne:

“Science does not explain the mathematical intelligibility of the physical world, for it is part of science’s founding faith that this is so.” (Reason and Reality)

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Related posts:

Faith: reflecting on evidence

Believing and understanding

Chesterton on Miracles

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A theoretical faith

The title of this post contains a pair of words that can be difficult to nail down. Let’s take them one at a time:

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Theory

In common parlance the word “theory” is used to denote something purely conceptual, usually in contrast to something which has been implemented in the real world. This causes difficulty when referring to scientific theories, because in science, the word carries somewhat different implications. Scientific explanations for observed phenomena start as hypotheses, which are basically conjecture. After more testing and data collection, if the hypothesis appears to be useful in explaining the data and predicting results, confidence in the explanation increases. Once there is a strong weight of supporting evidence, we start to refer to the explanation as a “theory”.

The American National Academy of Sciences describes the distinction in usage thus:

“In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by [data] gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena…”

So it is understandable that scientists become frustrated with the dismissal of a scientific theory with phrases like, “oh, it’s just a theory”. This sort of language shows a grave misunderstanding of the subject.

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Faith

Likewise, in common parlance, “faith” is often understood to mean “a belief without evidence”. But in the Christian context, faith carries very different connotations. Theologian Tyron Inbody (in The faith of the Christian church: an introduction to theology) notes three uses of “faith” within Christianity:

• Assent: we believe that God has revealed Himself to us and can be known personally. This aspect of faith is largely intellectual: we are presented with God’s assertions about Himself (in the Bible, for instance), we decide that they are trustworthy and assert that they are true.
• Trust: we believe that God will honour His promises, and that He is reliable.
• Loyalty: we strive to ‘live out our faith’. In this context: “To have faith is… to obey Jesus; it is to be loyal in life and death to the God whom we meet in Jesus Christ.”

Although these three aspects of Christian faith are distinguishable, they are also inseparable. Christian faith is inextricably entwined with understanding: we have knowledge and understanding of God from personal experience, Scripture and the community of believers, and this forms the basis of our trust in God. Inbody writes:

“Faith in the New Testament means belief, specifically belief in God’s Word in Scripture. To have faith is to assent or to give credence; it is to believe. Faith refers to our acceptance of the message of the gospel… Faith means ‘belief in and acceptance of His revelation as true… an act of intellect assenting to revealed truth.”

The Christian faith is not divorced from reason: it is inseparable from reason. But as Thomas Aquinas explained, it is not just an intellectual exercise: it is also an act of will. I decide that certain things are true, and I choose to act on that belief.

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A theoretical faith

Now, why have I put these two difficult words together?

Well, my personal exploration and acceptance of the Christian faith was similar in many ways to the development of a scientific theory. From the tentative hypothesis that Christianity is true, I sought more data with which to test this conjecture. The central elements of Christianity are the claims about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. I found the evidence of his death and resurrection convincing enough to explore further.

A scientific theory is a framework which helps to explain observed phenomena. What about Jesus’ life and teachings? Do they make sense of the world I experience?  The framework of Christianity explains the world that I see around me more coherently than any other.

Of course, we should seek to challenge any theory to test its robustness, so I do this with my faith. The “problem of evil” is often considered the biggest counter to Christianity: Given that we observe evil in the world, how can we believe in the existence of a God who is both loving and all-powerful? I explore this question, and I come to a remarkable conclusion: Firstly, I find in Christianity a compelling and convincing framework to explain the coexistence of evil in this world and the Christian understanding of God. Secondly, if I try to remove God from the picture, I don’t even know what the word “evil” means. It turns out that the “challenge” becomes still further support for my beliefs. And so my faith grows. The more that I test it, the more compelling it becomes.

Christianity also claims that we can experience God personally. Here we must move to the “belief in”. I move from a position of intellectual assent and step out: I seek to meet with God through prayer and personal experience. He meets me. The God I encounter personally resonates completely with the God of my intellectual assent. My faith grows.

From my experience, my belief in God, comes my loyalty to God. I have found that if I seek to live my life in accordance with His will and listening to Him, my life is a much better place. He has shown Himself to be faithful and good.

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I do not think that my personal experiences are unusual: in fact, I would say that the process I have described is analogous to the faith of most any Christian. The details will be a bit different, of course. St Paul had a rather more dramatic starting point for his faith, but he still based it on beliefs about God: specifically, beliefs that Jesus was God and that he was resurrected from the dead. Paul’s belief in and loyalty to God were a response to this.

Christian faith intrinsically contains a rational and evidentiary basis. N. T. Wright, the bishop of Durham, writes:

“I cannot… imagine a Christianity in which the would-be Christian has no sense, and never has had any sense, of the presence and love of God, or the reality of prayer, of their everyday, this-worldly life being somehow addressed, interpenetrated, confronted, embraced by a personal being understood as the God we know through Jesus.”

For a final description of faith in a Christian context, I close – as is often the case – with C. S. Lewis. In Mere Christianity, Lewis writes:

“Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.”

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Related posts:

Faith: reflecting on evidence

Believing and understanding

Chesterton on Miracles

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Improving graces

John Newton, the captain of a slave ship, became a Christian and a prominent Evangelical preacher. Reflecting on his own spiritual state and transforming power of God’s grace in his life, he wrote the following:

I am not what I ought to be — ah, how imperfect and deficient! I am not what I wish to be — I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good! I am not what I hope to be — soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection.

Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

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The profound honesty of his declaration is too beautiful to mar with commentary, so I won’t add anything of my own. I’ll simply end with Newton’s own response to God’s grace, which was to worship and glorify Him with these magnificent lines:

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Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

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Related posts:

Forgive us our sins

Serious, not fanatical

Modelled behaviour

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